Hazard of New Fortunes, a — Volume 5 eBook

“She’s graceful, too,” said Beaton.
“I’ve tried her in color; but I didn’t
make it out.”

“I’ve wondered sometimes,” said
Miss Vance, “whether that elusive quality you
find in some people you try to paint doesn’t
characterize them all through. Miss Dryfoos might
be ever so much finer and better than we would find
out in the society way that seems the only way.”

“Perhaps,” said Beaton, gloomily; and
he went away profoundly discouraged by this last analysis
of Christine’s character. The angelic imperviousness
of Miss Vance to properties of which his own wickedness
was so keenly aware in Christine might have made him
laugh, if it had not been such a serious affair with
him. As it was, he smiled to think how very differently
Alma Leighton would have judged her from Miss Vance’s
premises. He liked that clear vision of Alma’s
even when it pierced his own disguises. Yes,
that was the light he had let die out, and it might
have shone upon his path through life. Beaton
never felt so poignantly the disadvantage of having
on any given occasion been wanting to his own interests
through his self-love as in this. He had no one
to blame but himself for what had happened, but he
blamed Alma for what might happen in the future because
she shut out the way of retrieval and return.
When be thought of the attitude she had taken toward
him, it seemed incredible, and he was always longing
to give her a final chance to reverse her final judgment.
It appeared to him that the time had come for this
now, if ever.

XV.

While we are still young we feel a kind of pride,
a sort of fierce pleasure, in any important experience,
such as we have read of or heard of in the lives of
others, no matter how painful. It was this pride,
this pleasure, which Beaton now felt in realizing
that the toils of fate were about him, that between
him and a future of which Christine Dryfoos must be
the genius there was nothing but the will, the mood,
the fancy of a girl who had not given him the hope
that either could ever again be in his favor.
He had nothing to trust to, in fact, but his knowledge
that he had once had them all; she did not deny that;
but neither did she conceal that he had flung away
his power over them, and she had told him that they
never could be his again. A man knows that he
can love and wholly cease to love, not once merely,
but several times; he recognizes the fact in regard
to himself, both theoretically and practically; but
in regard to women he cherishes the superstition of
the romances that love is once for all, and forever.
It was because Beaton would not believe that Alma
Leighton, being a woman, could put him out of her heart
after suffering him to steal into it, that he now
hoped anything from her, and she had been so explicit
when they last spoke of that affair that he did not
hope much. He said to himself that he was going
to cast himself on her mercy, to take whatever chance